My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Pan Macmillan - Picador, for the ARC.
I'm afraid this really wasn't for me; from the description I thought it would be much more of a 'story', whereas the narrative conveys, in interminable detail, the almost 'depraved' decent into madness of a young mother.

Erika, with husband 'M' and 2 young children 'B' and 'E' move to Switzerland for 'M's job. He's missing more and more from their rented apartment, you never find out what he actually does and he seems to be oblivious to his wife's mental decline. Erika is at first enchanted by the move but not speaking French tends to leave her isolated. She wants to be the perfect wife and mother but as she dwells on this she begins to lose her identity and she neglects her children, barricades them for hours in the apartment under the pretext of games and feeds them bizarre combinations of snacks and drinks.

The narrative is split between Then and Now - where the reader has to assume that Erika is in an asylum, locked into her own thoughts.

Frankly, after skimming a lot of the book just to get to the ending, having reached it - I still have no idea what actually happened.

Little Bandaged Days is a profoundly intuitive, deep and compelling novel but I personally found it almost impossible to finish due to the emotions it brought to the fore. It was a very tense read and I feared for the children's safety and the mother's sanity whilst at the same time feeling so very frustrated by the father's apparent ignorance of the situation he had placed his wife and family in.

This was a very different book, and the idea behind it was good. However, I found it very difficult to get into, and almost painful in parts to read. The ending left many questions unanswered, and although I am sure that a lot of people will enjoy this rather challenging book, it wasn't really for me.

with her husband and two young children for her husband’s job. He is increasingly away from home more and more. She finds herself isolated in a country where she doesn’t even speak the language. We follow Erika‘s descent into madness.

This was an average book to me. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. I found it strange that Erika referred to her husband and children by initial only. This did irritate me at first but I got used to it. As a mum of two with a husband in the Navy there was a lot that I could relate to. This was a different read for me. I thought that the descent into madness was done quite subtly. I didn’t rate the ending but I could understand why it was done that way.

This is an unusual book and a very intense one. The story is of a young mother of two who moves with her successful husband to Geneva. While he pursues his career and goodness knows what else, she quietly goes mad in their flat. She doesn't speak French and her social interactions are minimal. People who she meets are more alive in her imagination than in reality. She makes little effort to change this and we can assume that she was already fragile before she arrived in this new world.

So far so good. But the book is hard to read partly because the subject matter of a descent into craziness is disturbing but largely because the narrative is fast and furious with hardly a pause for breath. We are inside her. Her children and her husband are named only with their initials which was irritating to read but I can understand that it served a function as an extra way to show her separation from reality. But the use of initials, along with the breathless writing style plus the strange parallel story which I couldn't make sense of and in the end gave up reading, made this an uncomfortable read.

However, there were many passages which were extremely well written and the descent into the hell of madness was powerful enough to keep me going until the end. I was intrigued, irritated, frustrated and fascinated in almost equal measure.

As an 'amateur' book reviewer, I love Netgalley and the fact that it makes me read books that I would not otherwise have picked up. 'Little Bandaged Days' is definitely one of those books. The first thing that struck me when I began the book was that the narrator refers to her husband and children using only initials - I felt it depersonalised them somewhat. The story begins with a 'normal' family of a mother, father and two children moving to Geneva with the husband's job.

Erika, increasingly alone with the children in a city where she knows no-one and speaks very little of the language, feels isolated and sleep-deprived and her descent into mental disorder begins. It is sometimes difficult to tell where the truth ends and her paranoid mind takes over.

This is a traumatic tale of a woman who loves so much it blinds her to so many truths, including her own.

Little Bandaged Days by Kyra Wilder was sent to me by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

This was a difficult book to read. It was well written and was a compulsive read, but the undertone of dread and the potential harm to the children made it a pretty heart wrenching read. I just marked it down a star as I didn’t completely understand the ending, and I wasn’t sure if it was just me not understanding it or it was meant to be left open to interpretation.

“I made my face ready to smile just in case she looked back at me but she didn’t, so I let my mouth sag because sometimes it just is what it is”
I really enjoyed Little Bandaged Days. Erika’s slow decline into madness is so beautifully narrated, everything hidden inside Wilder’s intense prose. What I found most interesting were the markers of Erika’s madness beginning to set in, the fort being left up when M returned home, the lipstick in the walls, the constant cleaning until her hands bled and ultimately the candles. The second narrative confused me a little, I assumed she had done something bad and ended up sectioned but the ending suggests otherwise.
Little Bandaged Days is such an honest and heartbreaking account of the struggles that come with mental illness. Erika clearly loves her family, she’s constantly striving to say the right thing to M and look a certain way and be a “good mother” and do good mother things but the resentment and loneliness that plagues her is too much.
Overall a great read, just would have liked a little more clarity with the second narrative. Thank you Netgalley and Picador Books

This is an extremely uncomfortable read. I hurtled through it at a chaotic pace, echoing the protagonist’s frantic attempts at comprehension, primarily because there was a sense of impending doom and I was so concerned for her little family, and I didn’t breathe until the last few pages. I remain confused by the second narrative. Has she been sectioned? Is she in prison? It didn’t seem to add anything to the story apart from perhaps as a comforter given she finally had help.

This is a remarkable book. Narrated by a woman who has moved to Geneva because of her husband's job, it portrays her isolation as she tries to settle into a country where she knows no-one and can't speak the language. She has two very young children, one just a baby and it doesn't help that her husband is rarely at home. Gradually we see her move from simple loneliness into what could be depression and ultimately psychosis. It is beautifully written in a sparse style; her family for example are referred to by their initials. Some of the descriptions are just wonderful. The lemons decaying and turning to dust will stick in my memory, as will the descriptions of Geneva in the heat. It's not an easy read but it is a worthwhile one. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I really struggled reading this book and found the use of initials for characters off putting at the start. To combat this I made up my own names for them with M becoming Michael, E becoming Ellie and B becoming Bailey until I was able to read it with just the initials. I skipped through the last 25% of the book as I just became bored with the whole thing and only carried on reading to find out what happened at the end. The idea around the book is a good one and important in today’s society, but the way the book was written let it down. Thanks to NetGalley for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

Parts of this book are really well written and describe the narrators struggle with mental health in a way that can be understood. I thought that other parts were confusing. Is that her in hospital? How much of her life in the apartment is real? The confusion I think added to the story as I tried to work out what was happening with the main character.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I enjoyed parts of this book but others not so much. I hated the initial for the children and kind of put me off. Erica is not a very likeable person either. Well written though and a good story

I'm unsure how I feel about this book. I liked it yet I didn't. The writing style was easy to read, yet I was uncomfortable reading it.

Erika wasn't a character that I particularly liked and by keeping her children's identities secret by just using their initials made it hard for me to picture them.

Little Bandaged Days was not a book for me but I can see many characteristics that will make it popular.

The blurb:

What is a mother anyway when her children are asleep? What could she possibly be? If a tree falls in a forest. It’s like that, isn’t it?

A mother moves to Geneva with her husband and their two young children. In their beautiful new rented apartment, surrounded by their rented furniture, and several Swiss instructions to maintain quiet, she finds herself totally isolated. Her husband’s job means he is almost never present, and her entire world is caring for her children – making sure they are happy, and fed and comfortable, and that they can be seen as the happy, well-fed, comfortable family they should be. Everything is perfect.

But, of course, it’s not. The isolation, the sleeplessness, the demands of two people under two, are getting to Erika. She has never been so alone, and once the children are asleep, there are just too many hours to fill until morning, and there is something coming to get her . . .

Kyra Wilder’s Little Bandaged Days is a beautifully written, painfully claustrophobic story about a woman’s descent into madness. Unpredictable, frighteningly compelling and brutally honest, it grapples with the harsh conditions of motherhood and this mother’s own identity, and as the novel continues, we begin to wonder just what exactly Erika might be driven to do..

This book made me feel very uncomfortable. It really wasn't one I enjoyed at all. It's well written, but not for me. 2*

** spoiler alert ** I raced through this book,in part due to the writing,and in part due to the characters slide into insanity (?) and knowing something was going to go very wrong.
The isolation of a new home in foreign country was perfect setting,for a mother home with two young children,and nobody to talk to,was the perfect setting for the increasing manic/depressed behaviour.
There were a few times I almost shouted at the character to feed her kid something more than sugar.
I found the second narrative took away from the flow of the story,and the ending didn't really do much for the story.
Far more positives than negatives for this one though.

Beautifully written book and if you’re willing to take yourself out of your comfort zone and relax into the style of the book then you will enjoy.

The subject matter is uncomfortable but relatable and so different from any other book I’ve read. This is what makes the book stand out for me as the subject is so taboo in our society.

This book is different. The writing style was unusual and I am unsure whether I liked it. I did find it rather difficult to follow the story
Overal there was a good storyline but it lacked depth and wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped.

I'm not sure what to say about this book. It was definitely different to what I was expecting.

Firstly, the way it was written took alot of getting used to. The dialogue is sparse. There are a few moments of chatter but even then it was written differently to how I am used to. I can see it working for other readers, but personally it didn't work for me. I would have liked the conversations to be in more depth.
Secondly, the majority of the characters are named by a single letter (M, B etc). It doesn't effect the story at all but I did find it confusing to start with. It made it harder know who was who, male or female etc. As I said, the story was not effected by this and I did adjust.

I did feel for the main character towards the end. Throughout the book there were a few moments that had me gripped and needing to know what happened next. But there weren't really any moments that had me really on the edge of my seat. But her situation does become more serious and I was rooting for her.

The book overall has a good storyline but unfortunately I didn't find it as exciting as I had hoped I would. However, I would still recommend it as I have no doubt others would have no problem with the way it is written and would therefore enjoy the story more.

A beautifully written, at times claustrophobically tense account of a mother's descent into madness. This is a compulsive read that feels at times almost voyeuristic. As a reader, we are so deeply immersed into the world of the characters that it feels hard to tear yourself away. Interspersed with the voice of our narrator in the present, presumably in a psychiatric facility, the unease burns throughout, without ever really reaching a climax. Highly readable and incredibly dark, the author demonstrates how easy it could be for all of us to lose our grip on reality.